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“That still doesn’t solve the problem of the pilots.”

“We all have negative PCR tests, and they’ll have to quarantine at the airport, but that’s not our problem, since we’re ‘Israeli.’ They’ll let them in, and then let them stay. They just won’t get to do the usual flyboy stuff. They sit until we call.”

She nodded and said, “So we have Taskforce help here?”

I laughed and said, “No, we most definitely don’t, at least until there is an American threat. What do you have? What are we going to do here?”

“We have the location of the refugee sponsor of the paraglider. He’san older guy, an expat Syrian who fled the fighting. The killer stayed with him. The police have cleared him of any involvement, but they don’t have the information we do. Because of it, they’ve determined the whole paragliding thing was an accident.”

“Even with the other guy being shot in the head? The paraglider who was originally supposed to take him up?”

“His case is being treated separately, as a stand-alone murder. They don’t want to hurt the recovering tourism industry. Israel didn’t push, and they were happy to let it go.”

“So this graybeard is connected to the attack? Or just a guy that’s now involved in something he has no idea about?”

“That’s what we need to figure out, but he’s connected. He’s the conduit for the money, I’m sure. He’ll have information.”

The pilot rang the intercom, then said, “We’re coming into final. Everyone needs to put on their seat belts. Thank you.”

Jennifer woke up, then leaned back into her seat, stretching like a cat. She saw me looking at Shoshana and said, “You guys make up?”

Shoshana gave her little wolf grin and said, “We were never in a fight. Pike knows better than that.”

Jennifer leaned into me and said, “Told you this would work out.”

I said, “Let’s wait until we get on the ground before we say that. Anytime we do anything with Carrie, bodies seem to follow.”

Chapter 14

Qassim Khaled woke up to his phone bleating out a tone. One that he recognized was from his sugar daddy. The man paying the bills.

It was a Zello call, meaning the voice message would be saved to his history like a chat message. He thought about just letting it sit, but knew he couldn’t.

He groggily rolled over, picked up the phone, went to the saved history, and hit play. He heard, “Are you there? It’s the Turtles. Answer the phone because the money is in jeopardy.”

That woke him up. He slid over his bed in his grimy undershirt, put his feet on the floor, and initiated the Zello push-to-talk feature. End-to-end encrypted and running over the internet, he knew that nobody hunting him could hear what he was about to say.

He clicked on a channel called Ninja Turtles and pressed the push-to-talk button, saying, “I’m here. I’m here.”

“This is Leonardo. The one you met in Palmyra. You remember me?”

He closed his eyes, trying to recall the time he’d brokered the penetration of Jabhat al Nusra’s area of Palmyra for the Knights of Malta. And he remembered. The man on the phone was the one that looked like Matt Damon. Blue eyes and lots of muscles.

He said, “Of course. Yes. Are you sending the money?”

“No. We’re not sending any more money. We’re going to take it to the men directly.”

Valiantly trying to clear the cobwebs in his head, Qassim said,“That’s not how this works. I have the conduit for transfer. You give it to me, and I give it to them. That’s what we agreed.”

“That’s not happening this time. I need to meet them. I need contact information.”

“That’s not what I do.”

Qassim heard the heat through the phone. “It’sexactlywhat you do. You did it in Syria and were good at it. You’ll do it again now. Or we’ll cut off our arrangement.”

Qassim sagged on the bed and said, “I’m thinking we should do that anyway. There was a death here, and I’ve been roped into the investigation. An Israeli was killed by a man I let stay in my house. I want no part of that. I’ll transfer money, but I don’t want to be involved with what that money does.”

Qassim heard a chuckle over the phone, then, “Are you serious here? We’ve paid you an enormous sum to help us, and we appreciate what you’ve done, but you can’t just turn off the spigot because you feel the water is too hot. I need the connection in Bahrain.”